The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian)

by Robert Sheckley

  Once in European Turkey, I joined a sight-seeing tour to the ruins of Edirne. After that I made a normal crossing through the checkpoint into Greece. Took a taxi to Komotini, and then trains and busses to Athens.

  Two days later, while I was having a beer in the George V in Syntagma Square, I saw a story on page five of the International Herald-Tribune. A Frenchman and a Britisher had been seized at customs in the Istanbul airport.

  They found the hashish, of course. The false bottoms I’d built into the Samsonites couldn’t stand up to the sort of inspection the customs people give when they know what they’re looking for.

  The trial was held later that month, and they gave Jean-Claude and Nigel life sentences. But those were reduced to two years when their lawyer proved that they were innocently carrying the suitcases for a third man—Mr. Big—name withheld—who was also supposed to get on the flight but had evidently panicked at the last moment.

  Some money changed hands, and my friends were out in a year. But they were angry, so I was told. And they blamed the mishap on me. In fact, they had been quite abusive about it, even threatening. But that had been ten years ago.

  I had tried to carry on with my life. I was a professional poker player in those days, not of the first rank, but good enough for the competition you encountered in Europe. The main action was never in the casinos, although you could make a living at them. The real poker action was at private parties, and in the hotel rooms of the rich at Cannes, Nice, Rome. The games were easy to beat. What was difficult was to lose often enough so they’d continue inviting you.

  It called for walking a certain line. You had to appear not to win too much. When you lost, you called attention to it: valuable publicity. You kept track of your real wins and losses in a lined school composition book. You kept that money separate from the rest. When it was possible. Although sometimes you and Katie had to eat on winnings. Then you played on paper, praying it would work out, reestablishing your nut, as they called the poker stake, when you won again.

  It was a tightrope, but at least I knew what I was doing. Until I started losing. Then I tightened up, began to make bad moves, errors of judgment, trying to get even, trying to win. And the drugs didn’t help, either.

  And then it all started falling apart.

  Panic, paranoia, cold flashes, bad ideas, and The Fear.

  And so I came back to America. And now I was going back to Europe again.

  After Turkey I realized that life was not a dream. I realized I was playing with dangerous stuff. Everybody smuggled in those days. I hadn’t really believed I could get caught. That’s because I’d gotten used to the warm glow of safety and invulnerability that drugs can give you, especially ludes, when sweet lassitude floods you and your face goes numb and you sink into a twilight place called The Way You Like It.

  Well, that was then and now was now. I was off the stuff; the past was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery with my hero, Jim Morrison, and I was returning to Paris.

  MARIA GUASCH

  9

  Harry Hamm wasn’t feeling so good the morning my detailed cable reached him. He was feeling a little flat. The first flush of pleasure at being on the island had passed. He had fixed up his house, applied for his permanencia, the papers you need to reside in Spain as a full-time resident. His garden was doing nicely, he had some friends. But something was missing, and he wasn’t sure what.

  He told me he had been glad to get my cable, because at this point he was ready to do anything, just to be occupied.

  He started up his SEAT and drove the twenty minute trip to the port of Ibiza. He spent a lot of time walking around, looking for Industrias Marisol. He finally found it, a little sailboard and scuba gear shop tucked into an alleyway off the Calle de la Virgen. The shop was closed.

  Harry walked around for a while, peering in the window, wondering what to do next. It was a fine day, the port was humming—it was June, fine weather, tourists arriving every day, a big season coming up by July.

  After a while an old Ibicencan in a shoe repair shop across the street noticed him trying to peer in the window.

  “Are you looking for Vico?”

  “This his store?”

  “Yes, Vico and his brother, Enrique.”

  “Where can I find them?”

  “Enrique left the island last night. Flew to San Sebastián, so I heard. As for Vico, he’s gone fishing with the Guasch brothers.”

  “Will they be back soon?”

  The old Ibicencan shrugged. “¿Quién sabé?”

  “Don’t the fishing boats usually come in around sunset?”

  “The ones tourists hire, yes. But the Guasch brothers are commercial fishermen. No telling how long they’ll be away.”

  “Is there some way I could get in contact with them?”

  The shoemaker laughed. “You could ask a sea gull.”

  Antonio grinned, then turned away, his eyes going sly. Harry recognized it, the island look, don’t tell the outsiders anything.

  “What about their business? Who looks after things when they’re away?

  “Maria Guasch, of course. Their sister.”

  Harry wrote down the directions and went to Maria’s finca in Santa Gertrudis.

  Maria’s place was a small, scrupulously kept farm in the hills near Santa Gertrudis. The low stone house was one of the old-fashioned fincas, built in accord with the length of the ridgepole, which was the longest piece of seasoned oak obtainable. There were two fields of almond trees. A few acres for crops such as cabbages and potatoes. Spaced neatly in the middle of the fields were the algorobos, the carob trees whose pods the Ibicencans dry and grind and feed to their animals in winter. A dog announced Harry’s arrival. It was one of those long, lean, yellow-eyed Ibicencan hounds that have been part of the island history since the time of the Carthaginians.

  Harry parked on a shoulder of the lane that ran in front of the farm. A woman had come outside and was standing just in front of the doorway, shading her eyes with one hand, looking at him. Harry called out, “¿Con permiso?” When she nodded he opened the gate and walked to the farmhouse.

  The woman was an Ibicenca, but her clothing was not the unrelieved black of the older island women. She still wore the long full skirt and long-sleeved blouse and little jacket. The women of Ibiza had been dressing like this for centuries. But the material of her skirt was a patterned brown and white rather than black, and her blouse was cream-colored with little figures. Her features were strong and beautiful. Her hair was black and straight, lustrous, tied back in a knot at the nape of her neck. She was tall for a woman of the islands, and slender. There was a serenity about her that Harry liked. She seemed to be in her late thirties or early forties.

  Harry introduced himself. In the Ibicencan fashion he told the woman where he lived, and how long he’d been on the island. He explained that he was looking into a problem for a friend, a problem which concerned a shipment sent to Señor Vico at Industrias Marisol and not paid for. He had just learned that Señor Vico had gone fishing with the Guasch brothers. Harry wondered if she knew where they had gone and when they’d be back.

  “They didn’t tell me anything about this,” Maria said. “But sometimes Pablo and César go fishing and stay out for several days at a time. Sometimes they put into a mainland port to refuel and stay a few days. They could be gone a week or more.”

  “And you don’t know where they were going this time?”

  “No,” she said. But he could see that it was bothering her, Vico going along with them, and maybe she was wondering like Harry was what Vico had brought along for the ride. Five sail-boards, maybe, fully equipped, to flog off somewhere along the Côte d’Azur?

  “Is there anybody who might know where your brothers went?”

  “The fishermen know everything about each other,” she told him. “You could ask on the docks. But they won’t tell you anything.”

  “Well,” Harry said, “thanks for your help. I guess I’d better try.”


  Maria hesitated. She was looking at him curiously. Then she asked him if he would like a glass of water. Harry said he’d like that very much. She offered him a seat in the shade of the porch, under the grape arbor. She went in and brought him a glass of water.

  “Hey,” Harry said, after a couple of sips, “this is some water!”

  Maria looked pleased. “It’s from the well on my grandfather’s farm, across the island behind San Juan. It’s the best water on the island.”

  “Well, it’s great. Thanks.” He finished the glass and put it down on the porch, stood up.

  “My brothers are not in any trouble, are they?” Maria asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Harry said. “But if they’re smuggling stolen goods out of Spain they could get into some trouble.”

  “You think that Vico has stolen these boards and is using my brothers to transport them somewhere?”

  “It looks that way,” Harry said.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “My brothers may smuggle a little whiskey or cigarettes, just like all the fishermen. There have been contrabandistas in these islands for centuries. But my brothers would never transport stolen goods.”

  “Maybe they don’t know those boards are stolen,” Harry said. “Maybe they’re just taking them somewhere for Vico like general cargo.”

  Maria thought about it, then went inside the finca. She came out almost at once with a black kerchief around her hair and a shawl around her shoulders.

  “I will come with you and speak to the men on the docks. You’ll get nowhere otherwise. Somebody may know where my brothers went.”

  FLIGHT TO PARIS

  10

  Rachel told me a little about herself during the flight to Paris. She claimed to be the only daughter of short parents, but had herself grown to the height of five feet nine, the tallest occurrence in her family in almost a hundred years. She had gone to high school in Waukegan, Illinois, and movingly described to me the cold winters they used to have, and how in February the neighborhood dogs, turning wild, began to run in packs and bring down the occasional delivery man. She told me how her father, a Church of England minister, had turned to repairing McCormick reapers when his entire congregation, a family of twenty-three from Little Dorking in Hampshire, moved to Hawaii.

  We entertained each other with lies and ambiguous glances as the plane trudged eastward above the corrugated gray Atlantic. The sun went down and the movie came up, a comedy starring George Bums as Tamerlane. I grew thoughtful after a while, thinking back over the faces in the crowd of people watching the departure, wondering if I hadn’t spotted the large man of the previous day.

  After a while, the movie ended and the stewardess brought coffee. Rachel fell asleep with the cup in her hand resting against the plastic passenger tray. I put it away for her and then fell asleep myself. 1 woke up when the “Fasten Seatbelts” announcement came on. We were on our final approach to De Gaulle Airport.

  ARRIVAL IN PARIS

  11

  Rachel was impressed by everything, especially the way everybody talked French and looked foreign. As for me, I felt like I’d come home. I had my own Paris, made up of the Rue Mouffetard, the Rue du Bac, the Rue du Cygne; the cafés along St-Germain-des-Prés, with their starched white linen tablecloths set against rows of amber mirrors in which tuxedoed waiters glided beneath cut-glass chandeliers, the whole bathed in a rosy Belle Époque glow; the weird stone landscapes of Châtelet-les-Halles; the hi-fi section of the FNAC store in Montparnasse; the Tex-Mex restaurant in a cobblestoned courtyard below a dance studio on the Rue du Temple; the American library near the Tour Eiffel; the science-fiction bookstore on the Boulevard St-Jacques.

  We went through customs and immigration. The polite French police official stamped our passports with indifferent benevolence: your papers are in order, you’re in Paris, everything is going to be all right.

  The taxi into town was expensive, but what the hell, it was Rachel’s money. I gave the taxi an address in the seventh arrondissement. My French was rusty, but I got through ok. The French are intelligent enough to figure out almost any attempt you make in their language. Of course, my driver was an Algerian named Mohammed ben-Amouk, so maybe things had changed a little since I was there last.

  The ride into Paris from De Gaulle was familiar and comforting. The modern dual concrete highway went across flat fields, farm land, and then an area of light industry as we approached Paris. Then more arterial highways began feeding in and we were at the Porte de la Chapelle, entering the Périphérique that circles Paris.

  It was still morning. I had planned that we would check in first with my old buddy Rus. Rus is a light-skinned Negro from the Caribbean, Jamaica or Barbados; his story changes over the years. The way Rus tells it, he had worked his passage to America as a kid, lived in Key West and Miami for a while, managed to join the American army in time for World War II, lived through the Normandy campaign, and had taken his discharge in Paris. He met Rosemary, a pretty blonde Dutch girl studying art history, and they married. Rus never left France again, except for summer holidays on Ibiza. Dutch girls make the best wives of any European nationality, in my humble opinion. Rosemary spoke English better than Rus, in a marked New Jersey accent. But if you listened carefully you could hear the shading of “th” sounds to “d”, a remnant of her native accent.

  The taxi came into the Boulevard St-Germain and took a left turn down the Rue de Bellechasse.

  “Well, well,” Rosemary said, looking at me when she opened the door, “look what the cat dragged in. Long time between drinks, huh, Hob?”

  She led us in through the tiny kitchenette.

  Rus’s apartment was dark and tiny and crowded with furniture. There was a bright Mexican blanket on the queen-size bed which they used for a couch by day. Near the bed was an ornamental brass table from Morocco with a tall brass hookah on it. In the corner of the room was the little drawing table with a gooseneck lamp, where Rus did his sketching, the radio close to him. There were a few original sketches on the walls, the work of friends of his. The room had a homey smell of wine, black tobacco, and the Sunday roast.

  Rosemary had broadened out some in the years since I’d seen her last, but she still was a very attractive lady—ample, open-faced, her flaxen hair beginning to gray, her smile as cheerful as ever.

  “Rosemary,” I said, “I’d like you to meet my client, Miss Rachel Starr.”

  “Hi,” Rosemary said, “any client of Hob Draconian is a friend of mine. How’s the Alternative Detective Agency, Hob?”

  “I’m here on Agency business,” I said. “And all my friends are going to get a piece of the action.”

  “It’s not really very big action,” Rachel explained. “I can’t afford much, though maybe we can figure out a bonus at the end if everything goes all right.”

  “Nobody expects to make anything out of the Agency,” Rosemary said. “It just gives us something to talk about.”

  Rus and Rosemary lived in a small apartment at 6, Rue de Bellechasse, not far from Invalides and the Chambre de Deputies. It was one of those rent-controlled Paris apartments that still exist, even in the high-rent districts, to reward those who don’t move. It was rumored that Leslie Caron lived in this building, though nobody had actually seen her.

  Rus was the same as always, a huge, soft, caramel-colored butterball of a man, hunched over his drawing board in a corner of the living room, drawing cartoons all day to the accompaniment of a whisper of jazz from his radio. He got up to greet me, enfolding me in the big abrazado that Ibiza exiles share when they meet.

  We sat down over a couple of Stella d’Artois beers and discussed old times and new. Rus was a center for news and information about Ibiza and its far-ranging exiles. Rus and Rosemary held an open house every Sunday. It was what the French call un bouf, an eating. He was a quick and inventive cook, Rus was, renowned for his miniature Mexican pizzas and baby spare-ribs.

  Rus and I had both known Alex back in the old I
biza days. At that time, Alex had been a young lawyer who dropped out for a taste of la dolce vita Ibiza-style. After a while he had returned to a practice in Washington, D.C., and that’s the last I’d heard of him.

  From Rachel I had learned that Alex had been working for the Selwyn Corporation, professional fundraisers for various causes, some of them legitimate. It was at this time that he had met Rachel. They had been planning to go to Europe together. Alex had gone over first. He had been playing with a combo in Paris, Les Monstres Sacrés, a sort of hobby with him; he loved the raffish Paris music scene. Shortly after his arrival, he had disappeared or dropped out of contact.

  Rus hadn’t heard anything; Alex hadn’t gotten in touch with him during this most recent visit.

  The place to begin the search was with Alex’s combo. They were playing at a café called El Mango Encantado, on Rue Gregory l’Angevin near the Centre Pompidou. Rosemary, whose French is a lot better than mine, telephoned one of my favorite little hotels, Le Cygne, on the Rue du Cygne near the Beaubourg. We booked Rachel separately into the Crillon, a famous luxury-class hotel in the first arrondissement. For a girl with limited funds, she was doing all right for herself. But what the hell, first time in Paris is the time to go for it. It was close to the Louvre, she explained to me. That was where she was planning to spend her time while I looked for Alex.

  EL MANGO ENCANTADO

  12

  Rachel and I walked east on the Boulevard St-Germain, then north on the Boulevard St-Michel, across the Seine by way of the Pont St-Michel, and across the Îie de la Cité, catching a glimpse of Notre-Dame as we entered the Boulevard Sébastopol on the Right Bank.